Djernes & Bell
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News
Hedeskov Living Lab has been nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Awards 2026. Building as landscape—going beyond notions of reuse and circularity, this project explores a reparative approach of “making good” as a new architectural practice.

Work
The renovation of Reyneke Winery translates the vineyard’s biodynamic ethos into architecture rooted in geology and reuse. Fermentation tanks, invasive timbers, and steel pipes are reincorporated as new building elements, while biochar and wine marc enrich clay renders with antibacterial properties. The result is a winery where production, landscape, and material care form a continuous cycle.

News
Djernes & Bell has been selected to take part in the design competition for Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse 2.0. Over the coming months, four invited teams will develop creative proposals to reimagine the stair and lantern of this extraordinary landmark in the raw coastal landscape.

News
Djernes & Bell have been appointed to transform Foreningshuset Sundholm 8. Located within the historic Sundholm complex on Amager—once a municipal arbejdsanstalt (workhouse) and today a vibrant social and cultural quarter—the project aims to create an open, welcoming, and inclusive community house.

Work
Mejeriet i Torup is an adaptation and reuse of a 600 m² former dairy, later artist studio and residence, into a cultural centre for art, performance, and community. The project preserves the industrial and artistic character of the existing building while introducing minimal, carefully placed interventions that enable new functions and connections.

News
Students at KADK have recreated constructive details from Hedeskov Centre for Regenerative practice in 1:1 models, showcasing the use of site-based materials and the connections between old and new.

Work
Djernes & Bell have designed and built the entrance pavilion for Syd for Solen music-festival 2025. ‘City-Portal’ is conceived as both structure and ritual—a point of passage that marks the transition from the city to the temporary world of music, gathering, and collective experience. It takes its inspiration from Copenhagen’s historic city gates—Vesterport, Østerport, and Nørreport.
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Djernes & Bell is an architectural practice based in Copenhagen with a special interest in what already exists: built, material, human, and natural. Founded in 2020 by architects Justine Bell and Jonas Djernes, the practice builds on the partners’ 15+ years experience working with transformation and restoration projects in Denmark and the UK.
Djernes & Bell work to preserve and improve existing built, natural, and social structures through reparative design, careful restoration, and the use of low-carbon materials. Cross-disciplinary methods fuse artistic and scientific research—from ancient crafts to ecological innovation. Intersecting material science, traditional building knowledge, and nature-based design, the practice transforms buildings and landscapes with the aim of supporting life in all its forms.
Collaborating across scientific, artistic, and civic sectors, Djernes & Bell bring extensive experience in adaptive reuse and transformation, working across both rural and urban contexts.
This website is a catalogue of the studio’s projects and working processes.
Djernes & Bell work across all stages of a project—from early concept and feasibility to detailed design, construction, and long-term adaptation. Architectural services include the reparative transformation and restorative reuse of existing buildings, as well as landscape strategies and low-carbon new construction systems. Each project is developed with a deep sensitivity to context, history, materials, and use, resulting in spatial solutions that are technically rigorous, materially grounded, and culturally meaningful.
Work often begins with strategic analysis, participatory workshops, and feasibility studies that bring users, stakeholders, and local communities into the design dialogue. This early-stage approach ensures that spatial strategies are rooted in real needs and the actual possibilities of a given site, creating long-term social and ecological value.
Alongside architectural design, Djernes & Bell engage in cross-disciplinary research into materials, agro-ecology, nature-based solutions, and restorative value chains. Material mapping, hands-on workshops, and experimental prototyping are used to develop innovative approaches to construction—from biobased materials and circular systems to the revival of traditional craft techniques.
Projects span both rural and urban contexts and often sit at the intersection of built environment, landscape, and community life. The aim is to create architecture that supports ecological resilience, strengthens local cultures, and enables places where life—human and more-than-human—can thrive.
Nyvej 16C, 1.sal
1851 Frederiksberg
Copenhagen
Team
- Justine BellArchitect / Founding Partner
- Jonas DjernesArchitect / Founding Partner
Awards
- EU Mies Award Nominee, HEdeskov Living Lab, 2026
- Dezeen Awards Longlist, Hedeskov Living Lab, Sustainability Category, 2025
- Renoverprisen, shortlist, 2025
- The Danish Arts Foundation, working grant, 2025
- The Architectural Review, New Into Old Award, shortlist, 2025
- Licitationen, Building Awards, finalist, 2024
- Danish Ministry of Culture, New National Architecture Policy, 2024
- The Danish Arts Foundation, working grant, 2024
- Realdania & Ny Carlsberg Fond, Stedet Tæller X, 2024
- Realdania, Funding for research & dissemination, 2023
- The Danish Arts Foundation, working grant, 2023
- Dreyers Foundation, START, 2022
- The Danish Arts Foundation, project grant, 2021
- Dreyers Foundation, new practice grant, 2020

We are always open to architects, students, and collaborators who want to be part of the rebalancing. If you see architecture as a means to repair, rethink, and regenerate—while shaping a more symbiotic future—we would love to hear from you.

















Hedeskov Living Lab
Djursland, Denmark
Making Good: Reparative Ecologies
The Hedeskov Centre for Regenerative Practice transforms a former rural school in Djursland through a tectonic and bio-regional approach, embedding the building within its geological and ecological context. The project embraces the principle of ‘making good’, prioritizing repair, material circularity, and the integration of hyper-local and up-cycled materials over demolition and new construction. The transformation builds upon existing structures, restoring and adapting them through trans-disciplinary craft methods that draw from local geological resources, vernacular building traditions and ecological processes.
Building from landscape
Site-won moraine clays, typha-fiber, and local timber shape the building’s material language. The architecture is a direct translation of the landscape, with clay plasters and rammed clay floors formed from the surrounding subsoil, grounding the building in its bio-regional specificity. The disused garage has been re-imagined with a lightweight internal timber frame set upon lime-crete point foundations, its infill crafted from hemp-lime, ensuring breathability and thermal regulation. The former school’s ‘bindingsværk’ construction has been repaired using traditional techniques while introducing openings that frame views of the surrounding reforestation and regenerative agriculture efforts, reinforcing the connection between built form and landscape.
Trans-disciplinary, trans-formative
This trans-disciplinary process—integrating conservation crafts, material science, and ecological design—demonstrates an alternative architectural paradigm: one that revalues the existing, harnesses local resources, and works in symbiosis with place. Hedeskov is not an object but a site of continual transformation, where architecture becomes an extension of the landscape through material, memory, and repair.
Tags
- Built
- Transformation
- Site-Based
- Materials
Year
2022–2025
Size
500 sqm + 180 ha
Photo
Johan Dehlin, Hampus Berndtson, Djernes & Bell
Illustration
Djernes & Bell
Press

















